(Warning: this poem is not for the religiously inclined.)

For centuries, entrepreneurs
Have been selling slivers
Of the True Cross of Jesus
Promising how much it delivers.
Of course, if they were any part
Of the real True Cross at all
The weight of all that wood means
The cross was thirty feet tall.

Still, it is only meant to be
A symbol of The Son Of God
Who got murdered and transformed
Into a deity, but that's odd.
It’s like all the Romans making
A ****** dagger their sign
Of the purity of Julius Caesar;
Revered if not quite divine.

Or maybe worshipping the bullet
That killed Kennedy or King.
Are we sure that kind of devotion
Is the right way to the right thing?
But fonts full of holy water did
The trick for many centuries.
So, maybe the faithful don’t care
About ecumenical vagaries.

Yet I don’t hold much hope out
For businesses of spirituality
Who put up golden castles
In zones of the most abject poverty.
Anyone who thinks a god
Needs to look down on glitz
Promises not much more
Than a dogma from the pits.

We need to celebrate what we have
And not so much what is lost.
What has all the jewels and gold
And superstition added to the cost?
I prefer to keep my integrity and
Check out who’s the real boss.
Knowing that it might upset those
Who get weepy about a cross.